Chubby, brunette Eunice Kinnison sat in a rocker, reading the Sunday papers and listening to the radio. Her husband Ralph lay sprawled upon the davenport, smoking a cigarette and reading the current issue of EXTRAORDINARY STORIES against an unheard background of music. Mentally, he was far from Tellus, flitting in his super-dreadnaught through parsec after parsec of vacuous space. E.E. "Doc" Smith, Triplanetary, Chapter 5: "1941"

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Good Book

"A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat."

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Its Origin and Purpose Are Still a Mystery

How to Get Into Manga. I'm still trying to figure out how to get into comi—your pardon, "graphic novels". And I'll note that I've noticed more shrinkage at the local big box in exchange for graphic novels and manga.

I'm talking about the original one here. Black-and-white. Almost no special effects, unless you count some nice camera angles and such. No blood. No gore. No visible monsters. Nothing that litters today's horror films.

But I dare you to watch this movie. At night. Alone. In a storm. I dare you. I double-dog-dare you!

I'm reading books faster than I'm posting reviews! Just hit 60 for the year-to-date. The complete list, as always, is here. Reviews to come, promise, as soon as the audit is done at the firehouse, I catch up on a couple of other firehouse projects, and (the infamous) etc.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Scanners Live in Vain!

I first ran across Cordwainer Smith in a collection I got for Christmas waaaayy back when. My parent's would buy old copies of Science Fiction Book Club editions at garage sales and yard sales and give them to me each year. One year I got The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (Volume 1), edited by Robert Silverberg. This was a collection of stories that "should have" won the Nebula Award (except for the fact that the award did not exist at that point). Just about every story is a winner, and Smith's entry, Scanners Live in Vain, was definately a tale that turned my world upside down.

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg was broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the mirror.

In a few short pages, Cordwainer Smith not only paints an interesting tale, but shows a vast background. What are the Beasts? Why do people live in cities and are afraid of the Wild? How many worlds does man inhabit? Why are the Scanners both revered and scorned? What are the "Vomacts"? And more...

This being the Dark Ages, before the internet, before Google, before vast databases and exchanges of information painlessly between fans, I could not find out much more on the author. The library had nothing. Bookstores were nonexistent in the town I lived in; my sources of books were a few drugstores and magazine stores/soda fountains that also had some book racks. It wasn't until a few years later, and a different town that I had access to a bookstore. And soon after that, I came across The Best of Cordwainer Smith, with notes (and a timeline!) by one of the earliest of "Smith Scholars", J.J. Pierce. It was like a thunderbolt striking. There was a whole other universe in the background of that one story, a powerful Instrumentality of Mankind, "uplifted" animals called Underpeople, multiple ways of going through space, planets that changed people as much as people tried to change the planets, a spice more powerful than that of the Dune series, and more!

I think I read that whole book in one night.

Another book was mentioned, Norstrillia. I could not find it in the bookstore, and they even said it was out of print. Serendipity, do-dah, I came across it a few month's later in a local used bookstore (I was probably their biggest customer!). Another book read in one night. The tale of C'mell and the man (boy) who bought Earth and their strange adventures. What tales!

The timeline in The Best of Cordwainer Smith listed a number of tales and hinted at a background that went beyond the stories there. Would they ever show the light of day? The answer, eventually, was yes, with the release of Quest for Three Worlds (the tale of Casher O'Neil), The Instrumentality of Mankind (various shorts, mostly from the early part of the saga) and a short story finished by Smith's wife after his death.

I treasured the books and read them again and again. Eventually came the two beautiful editions from NESFA and, most recently, two trade paperbacks from Baen (see below for more information, including links to several of the stories in the Baen editions). With the internet and all of its resources, more information is found about Smith/Linebarger. His personal life is as fascinating as his fiction! Dabbler in "small wars", developer of psychological warfare, friend to Chinese rebels and more.

What might have been? Linebarger lost a notebook full of story ideas and background. What did we miss out on? I've also heard that outlines and fragments were taped by him. Were the tapes lost? I've heard conflicting reports. Maybe we'll learn more if a biography I've heard about, off and on, is ever finished.

Go below for some samples of this wonderful writing. Click on the links for the stories up at Baen's site. And then buy the books. Be prepared for wonders!

Think Blue, Count Two:

Space sometimes commands strange tools to its uses--the screams of a beautiful child, the laminated brain of a long-dead mouse, the heartbroken weeping of a computer. Most space offers no respite, no relay, no rescue, no repair. All dangers must be anticipated; otherwise they become mortal. And the greatest of all hazards is the risk of man himself.

The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All:

If he had come back from the stars, come back from the cold beyond the Moon, come back from all of the terrors of the Up-and-Out, come back by means unknown to any man living, come back in a form not himself and nevertheless himself, how could we expect the crude stimuli of previous human knowledge to awaken him?

The Burning of the Brain:

She looked at the ruined face of Dolores Oh, at the dreaming terror in Dolores's eyes, and she realized that Dolores had passed all limits of nightmare and had become a veritable demon of regret, a possessive ghost who sucked the vitality from her husband, who dreaded companionship, hated friendship, rejected even the most casual of acquaintances, because she feared forever and without limit that there was really nothing to herself, and feared that without Magno Taliano she would be more lost than the blackest of whirlpools in the nothing between the stars.

Only in the planoforming room did the Go-Captain know what happened. The Go-Captai, his pinlighters sitting beside him, took the ship from one compression to another, leaping hotly and frantically through space, sometimes one light-year, sometimes a hundred light-years, jump, jump, jump, jump until the ship, the light touches of the captain's mind guiding it, passed the perils of millions upon millions of worlds, came out at its appointed destination, and settled lightly as one feather resting upon others, settled into an embroidered and decorated countryside where the passengers could move as easily away from their journey as if they had done nothing more than to pass an afternoon in a pleasant old house by the side of a river.

A few notes on the Higher Criticism: it is reasonable to assume that all of the stories in the canon are true in the best meaning of the term; to believe otherwise leads to nonsense. Are we to believe that Winston Chruchill, Sherlock Holmes, and George Bernard Shaw are fictional? If the reader wishes to believe that Cordwainer Smith was a Lord of the Instrumentality cast back in time to our age and who wrote of the history and fables of his past from memory then I will not argue with such a person. I behooves the careful reader to treat apparent contradictions rationally—that is, pay no attention to them. They are clearly artifacts of one of the following:

* Typographic and/or editorial errors on the part of persons known or unknown between the author and the reader.

* Minor slips in the memory of the author—quick now, which came first the War of the Spanish Succession or the War of the Austrian Succession?

Deliberate attempts on the part of the author to disguise events or people for the sake of preserving the appearance of free will. ("...the world is not yet ready..." wrote Dr. John H. Watson, and this is still true).

Where dates or comments are in contradiction, I have selected those which best serve my theories. Go thou, and do likewise."

Made up of (unique items from each subsequent item are highlighted and added to the count):

The Rediscovery of Man:Introduction (John J. Pierce); Editor's Introduction (James A. Mann). Stories in the Instrumentality of Mankind: No, No, Not Rogov!; War No. 81-Q (rewritten version); Mark Elf; The Queen of the Afternoon; Scanners Live in Vain; The Lady Who Sailed The Soul; When the People Fell; Think Two, Count Blue; The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All; The Game of Rat and Dragon; The Burning of the Brain; From Gustible's Planet; Himself in Anachron; The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal; Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!; The Dead Lady of Clown Town; Under Old Earth; Drunkboat; Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons; Alpha Ralpha Boulevard; The Ballad of Lost C'mell; A Planet Named Shayol; On the Gem Planet; On the Storm Planet; On the Sand Planet; Three to a Given Star; Down to a Sunless Sea. Other Stories: War No. 81-Q (original version); Western Science Is So Wonderful; Nancy; The Fife of Bodidharma; Angerhelm; The Good Friends.

Norstrilia: Counts as one novel.

We the Underpeople:Introduction (Robert Silverberg); The Dead Lady of Clown Town; Under Old Earth; Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons; Alpha Ralpha Boulevard; The Ballad of Lost C'mell; Norstrilia (published first by Baen, but actually contains later stories in the sequence).

When the People Fell:Introduction (Frederik Pohl); Instrumentality Stories: No, No, Not Rogov!; War NO. 81-Q (rewritten version); Mark Elf; The Queen of the Afternoon; Scanners Live in Vain; The Lady Who Sailed The Soul; When the People Fell; Think Blue, Count Two; The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All; The Game of Rat and Dragon; The Burning of the Brain; From Gustible's Planet; Himself in Anachron; The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal; Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!; Drunkboat; A Planet Named Shayol; On the Gem Planet; On the Storm Planet; On the Sand Planet; Three to a Given Star; Down to a Sunless Sea. Miscellaneous Works: War No. 81-Q (original version); Western Science Is So Wonderful; Nancy; The Fife of Bodidharma; Angerhelm; The Good Friends (published second by Baen, but actually contains earlier stories in the sequence; also contains the timeline devised by John J. Pierce).

The Best of Cordwainer Smith:Introduction and Timeline (John J. Pierce); Scanners Live in Vain; The Lady Who Sailed The Soul; The Game of Rat and Dragon; The Burning of the Brain; The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal; Golden the Ship Was—Oh! Oh! Oh!; The Dead Lady of Clown Town; Under Old Earth; Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons; Alpha Ralpha Boulevard; The Ballad of Lost C'mell; A Planet Named Shayol.

Quest for Three Worlds:Introduction (John J. Pierce); On the Gem Planet; On the Storm Planet; On the Sand Planet; Three to a Given Star.

The Instrumentality of Mankind:Introduction (Frederik Pohl; almost, but not quite the same as the Introduction in When the People Fell); Stories from the Instrumentality of Mankind: No, No, Not Rogov!; War No. 81-Q; Mark Elf; The Queen of the Afternoon; When the People Fell; Think Blue, Count Two; The Colonel Came Back from Nothing-at-All (note title change); From Gustible's Planet; Drunkboat. Other Stories: Western Science Is So Wonderful; Nancy; The Fife of Bodidharma; Angerhelm; The Good Friends.

Space Lords:Prologue; Mother Hitton Littul Kittens; The Dead Lady of Clown Town; Drunkboat; The Ballad of Lost C'mell; A Planet Named Shayol; Epilogue.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Nifty Gadgets

Ain't these nifty little gadgets? I can see buying several, because of the MilSpec cuteness factor that is built in. I can also see the TSA having hairy fishnuts when you tried to bring one on a airplane as well.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Things We Learn

An extremely rapid technique for deconvolving single exponential luminescence decay data is described that involves essentially no mathematical manipulation of the experimental data. The method permits "real time" measurement of deconvolved luminescence lifetimes with conventional pulsed, lifetime-fluorometers and phosphorimeters. The method assumes that the true luminescence decay of the chromophore is accurately represented by a single exponential decay function.

Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk?'